Featured books by Andrei Makine

I first came across this author with Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer and wondered why I had not come across him before. His language is exquisite; beautiful, lyrical and powerful as he contrasts simple lives with the horrors of war. In this one he contrasts the “drabness” of Russian with the “colour” of France. It’s not an easy read, certainly you must persevere, take it slowly and then I am sure you will be drawn into its magic.Comparison: Sandor Marai, W G Sebald, James Meek.

Other books by Andrei Makine

Acclaimed Novelist Andrei Makine Celebrates True Patriotism in This Time of False Heroes Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber enlisted in the French army at the outset of World War II and quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant. Despite his patriotism and courage in defending his country, in which he narrowly escaped death several times, he suffered the bigotry of his fellow soldiers until he was expelled from the army for being Jewish. He sought exile in Spain and was deported and interned in a concentration camp before he managed to join the Allied army in North Africa. He eventually participated in the triumphant liberation of his homeland. His story, almost forgotten, would have remained unknown if not for the efforts of the award-winning and internationally bestselling author Andrei Makine, Retelling Servan-Schreiber's dramatic life with a novelist's skill, he reveals a man who embraced experience in all its joys and sorrows, who knew the pleasures of love amid the savagery of war, and who could forgive the hatred he was subjected to but never forget it. In Servan-Schreiber, who is now nearly a centenarian, Makine celebrates virtues that every citizen should be reminded of: self-sacrifice, honor, love of country, and true heroism.

Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber enlisted in the French army at the outset of World War II and quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant. Despite his patriotism and courage in defending his country, in which he narrowly escaped death several times, he suffered the bigotry of his fellow soldiers until he was expelled from the army for being Jewish. He sought exile in Spain and was deported and interned in a concentration camp before he managed to join the Allied army in North Africa. He eventually participated in the triumphant liberation of his homeland.His story, almost forgotten, would have remained unknown if not for the efforts of the award-winning and internationally bestselling author Andrei Makine, Retelling Servan-Schreiber's dramatic life with a novelist's skill, he reveals a man who embraced experience in all its joys and sorrows, who knew the pleasures of love amid the savagery of war, and who could forgive the hatred he was subjected to but never forget it. In Servan-Schreiber, who is now nearly a centenarian, Makine celebrates virtues that every citizen should be reminded of: self-sacrifice, honor, love of country, and true heroism.

Catherine the Great's life seems to have been made for the cinema. Countless love affairs and wild sexual escapades, betrayal, revenge, murder - there is no shortage of historical drama. But Oleg Erdmann, a young Russian filmmaker, seeks to discover and portray the real Catherine, her essential, emotional truth. When he is dropped from the film he initially scripted - his name summarily excised from the credits - Erdmann is cast adrift in a changing world. A second chance beckons when an old friend enriched by the capitalist new dawn invites him to refashion his opus for a television serial. But Erdmann is made acutely aware that the market exerts its own forms of censorship. While he comes to accept that each age must cast Catherine in its own image, one question continues to nag at him. Was the empress, whose sexual appetites were sated with favours bought with titles and coin, ever truly loved? In his search for an answer, Erdmann will find a love of his own that brings the fulfilment that filmmaking once promised him.

Catherine the Great's life seems to have been made for the cinema. Countless love affairs and wild sexual escapades, betrayal, revenge, murder - there is no shortage of historical drama. But Oleg Erdmann, a young Russian filmmaker, seeks to discover and portray the real Catherine, her essential, emotional truth. When he is dropped from the film he initially scripted - his name summarily excised from the credits - Erdmann is cast adrift in a changing world. A second chance beckons when an old friend enriched by the capitalist new dawn invites him to refashion his opus for a television serial. But Erdmann is made acutely aware that the market exerts its own forms of censorship. While he comes to accept that each age must cast Catherine in its own image, one question continues to nag at him. Was the empress, whose sexual appetites were sated with favours bought with titles and coin, ever truly loved? In his search for an answer, Erdmann will find a love of his own that brings the fulfilment that filmmaking once promised him.

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him - a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover. As the dreary Brezhnev era gives way to Perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

One night in St Petersburg, two men meet, both adrift in the brash new Russia: Shutov, a writer visiting after years of exile in Paris, and Volsky, an elderly survivor of the Siege of Leningrad and Stalin's purges. His life story - one of extreme suffering, courage and an extraordinary love - he considers unremarkable. To Shutov it is a revelation, the tale of an unsung hero that puts everything into perspective and suggests where true happiness lies.

As a child, Elias Almeida loses both his parents during the Angolan uprising against colonial rule. As an adult and professional revolutionary, he bears witness to mankind at its pitiless worst. Yet he continues to believe in a better world and in the redeeming power of love -- even though he cannot be with the woman he loves, who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of Moscow. Spanning forty years of Africa's past as a battleground between East and West, this powerful novel explores the heights and depths of human nature as it tells a profoundly affecting story of sacrifice and idealism.

When a young, rebellious writer from Leningrad arrives in a remote Russian village to study local customs, one woman stands out: Vera, who has been waiting thirty years for her lover to return from the Second World War. As fascinated as he is appalled by the fruitless fidelity of this still beautiful woman, he sets out to win her affections. But the better he thinks understands her the more she surprises him, and the more he gains uncomfortable insights into himself. Lyrically evoking the haunting beauty of the Archangel region, Makine tells a timeless story of the human heart and its capacity for enduring love, selfish passion and cowardly betrayal.

I first came across this author with Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer and wondered why I had not come across him before. His language is exquisite; beautiful, lyrical and powerful as he contrasts simple lives with the horrors of war. In this one he contrasts the “drabness” of Russian with the “colour” of France. It’s not an easy read, certainly you must persevere, take it slowly and then I am sure you will be drawn into its magic.Comparison: Sandor Marai, W G Sebald, James Meek.

In present-day France a Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad orphanage in the 1960s and the old Frenchwoman, a family friend, whose tales fed his dreams of a better world. One story in particular has stayed with him: that of her brief, passionate affair, during World War II, with the French fighter pilot Jacques Dorme, who subsequently died in a plane crash in the Siberian mountains. So the narrator decides to retrace Jacques Dorme's steps, beginning a journey which leads him not only to revisit the land of his birth but also to see his adopted homeland in an unflattering new light. A profound and moving novel about the dangers of ideology and of war, delivered with humour, sensuousness and great lyricism.

In World War II Ivan Demidov won the Red Army's highest award for bravery, that of Hero of the Soviet Union. But the decades following the War have brought him a life of hardship, alleviated only by his pride in this achievement and the modest privileges granted to War veterans. His daughter, Olya, on the other hand, born in 1961 and trained as a linguist, takes up a post as an interpreter at Moscow's International Business Center with access to a metropolitan lifestyle beyond the dreams of her parents. The only catch is that her job involves servicing foreign businessmen around the clock and passing on information about them to the KGB. This is a stunning drama of disillusionment and tension between the two generations: the one that grew up under Stalin and saw its faith in him crumble and the one that grew up under Brezhnev, fixated on the glamour of the West and its material goods. Makine's vivid and authentic evocation of daily life in post-war Soviet Russia matches in its intensity the portraits of nineteenth-century Russian life offered by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

A novel showing the lasting and devastating effects of Stalin's brutal reign of terror.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fictionnovels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

In a snowbound railway station deep in the Soviet Union, a stranded passenger comes across an old man playing the piano in the dark, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Once on the train to Moscow he begins to tell his story: a tale of loss, love and survival that movingly illustrates the strength of human resilience. 'A novella to be read in a lunch hour and remembered for ever' Jilly Cooper, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

Amid the ashes of the Soviet Union a Russian army doctor turned spy addresses the woman he loves - a fellow spy who has shared his shadowy life in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, but who has disappeared. The tale he unfolds spans three generations of his family, ordinary people caught up in the convulsions of the Russian empire in the twentieth century, from the civil war through the Second World War to beyond the fall of communism. It is a tale of brutality and soured dreams yet also one of altruism, tenacity and immense courage, written by a master.

Addressing himself to his childhood friend Arkadi from exile in Paris, Alyosha recreates their happy years in a village commune outside Leningrad in the 60s, when the sky was always blue and each summer they marched with drum and trumpet at communist youth camp, their eyes set on the glorious future promised by the propaganda machine - until they learn the full horror of what their parents had suffered during the war and under Stalin, and begin to see through the lies. 'Moving and gripping' The Times